Brother's Trattoria was rated and listed in the 2007/08 ZAGAT Westchester Hudson Valley Restaurants guide. 

If your are looking for a family “neighborhood Italian joint”, this spot in Beacon comes “highly recommended” because service in the upscale but casual, brick-walled space “couldn’t be friendlier”; “kids love the pizza”, while grown-ups cite the “fine” traditional trattoria fare, the “excellent wines by the glass” and the “good food”/”good value” ratio.
Zagat gave Brothers an Excellent rating.

Small Italian restaurant offers big treat to diners

Trattoria in Beacon popular local spot

By Lori Pierce Abendschein
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

There's no question when you see the line out the door that you've found one of the popular neighborhood restaurants in the City of Beacon.

Brother's Trattoria looks commonplace from the outside, but step inside and not only are you likely to find yourself in a queue waiting for a seat at one of the less than a dozen tables, but you'll find warm yellow walls with an aged Venetian plaster appearance and enormous framed works of art that make for a wonderfully appealing and attractive place to dine.

It is probable, too, that you will see owner Ken Berisha greeting customers, helping to serve and chatting with what seems like a host of regular clientele enamored with this bustling gem of a spot.

Service was prompt on the evening of our visit and, within moments, beverages and a basket of toasted garlic knots were before us.

Menu runs gamut

The menu is composed of hot and cold heroes, pizza, a list of salads and standards ranging from stuffed pastas such as baked ziti Siciliano ($7.95) or manicotti ($7.25). Other appealing choices include rigatoni carbonara ($8.95), penne ala vodka ($8.95) or gnocchi with meat sauce ($8.95). Entrees run the full gamut from eggplant and chicken to veal and seafood and are augmented with specials to add a bit of variety.

We began with a steaming bowl of pasta e fagioli, abundant with fresh garlic, beans in a savory tomato broth ($3.75), a loaf of garlic bread loaded with melted mozzarella ($1.95) and a plate piled with perfectly crisp calamari accompanied by marinara sauce ($5.95).

The Trattoria offers an expansive selection of specialty pizzas, all of which were tempting: pesto, primavera, grilled vegetarian or the Brother's Best with sausage, s, peppers, spinach, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella and Romano cheeses.

Our decision for dinner became easy when we managed a sneak peek of the meals being served to a nearby table.

The highlight of the evening was a seafood combination ($17.95), pouring over with scallops, calamari and shrimp in a pink cream sauce. Veal Sorrentino ($14.95) was a treat with tender scaloppini beneath layers of eggplant, prosciutto and provolone cheese. Perhaps, sounding a bit blase, but exceedingly well prepared was a chicken parmigiana dinner ($9.50).

All of the Trattoria's specialty entrees are served with a fresh salad and a choice of pasta, which make them like the rest of the offerings, a great value.

For a small restaurant and one that also serves a large take-out clientele, we were pleasantly surprised by the swift but hospitable service provided by our server and some of the staff that stepped out from behind the counter to assist on numerous occasions.

Small touches noticed

And there was the attention to serving dishes that even though simple, were well executed and eye appealing. Touches such as the sweet ripened slices of tomato in the dinner salads and a fine-tasting balsamic vinaigrette didn't go unnoticed.

Desserts are made on the premises, and though we couldn't manage to take in another morsel, they included chocolate mousse ($3.95), tiramisu ($4.95) and chocolate mousse cake ($3.95).

I'm already looking forward to a return visit around November, once Berisha has expanded the restaurant and added 50 seats -- an expansion that will give him an opportunity to offer an upscale menu.

And for those waiting in line -- thankfully -- more seats!

(Since the printing of this article Brothers Trattoria has added 2 additional rooms.  The Lounge/Bar room can comfortable seat 25 and has a fire place for your enjoyment.  The formal Dining Room can seat 55 and it's ambiance makes you feel as if you were dining in Tuscany.)

The Poughkeepsie Journal pays for the meals that are the subjects of restaurant reviews and reviewers do not identify themselves prior to the end of the meal. Lori Pierce Abendschein is a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and a member of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs.

DINING OUT
BROTHER'S TRATTORIA
Overall **** (Very Good)

465 Main St., Beacon; (845) 838-3300; open seven days serving from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; limited handicapped accessibility, there is one small step up; reservations accepted; take-out and delivery available; children can be accommodated; Mastercard and Visa accepted; smoking is not permitted.

Price range --Dinner entrees, $10.95-$23.50.

Directions -- From Poughkeepsie, follow Route 9 to Route 52 west to Beacon. Make a left onto Main Street and restaurant will be on the right. There is a sign for a municipal parking lot on the right just before the restaurant.

Rating breakdown

Food                    ****
Ambiance             ****
Service                 ***
Value                   ****

Pizza's perpetual appeal helps success

BEACON -- If there is any upper limit to the popularity of pizza in America, it has not been discovered.

Ken Berisha, one of at least 63,000 pizza restaurant operators in the country, is doing his share.Berisha began in 1988 with Beacon

Pizzeria, a small shop. Eight years ago he set up Brother's Trattoria, a full-scale restaurant on Main Street in the East End. He bought the building, expanded and plans to expand yet again. He has even bought property on the western end of the street to open another place, probably in a cafe style.

Pizza was the foundation, and remains a key even though the menu has expanded, too. Berisha learned to make pizza in Trieste, Italy, where he lived for many years. He hails from Kosovo.

"Every day, it's something new you learn," Berisha said.

Suits entrepreneurs

As a career choice, making pizza worked out well for Berisha, as it has for many entrepreneurs. His story mirrors that of the man sometimes credited with introducing the Italian delight to the United States.

He was Gennaro Lombardi, an immigrant from Naples, who opened a pizzeria on Spring Street in Manhattan in 1905, writes Evelyne Sloman in a piece published in Pizza Today. That makes this the 100th anniversary of pizza in America.

"The pizza business remains one of the few that can be built -- hands on -- from the ground up," she wrote. "This is why people from all walks of life are attracted to the industry."

"Hands on" is literally true. In making a pie, "It all depends on your hands, to make sure it's all stretched even," Berisha said. "If you didn't work hard enough on the dough, one side will be thinner and the other side will be thicker." That pie won't cook right.

The maker must know the feel of the dough. "The way you roll the dough and close the holes, so there's no air inside," counts for a lot.

The dough is first made into a thick, round slab much smaller than a pie.

"Everybody has their own recipes. There's a big difference in recipes," Berisha said.

The dough is then worked out by hand and enlarged, with a rim fashioned around it that will be the outer crust. It is then tossed in the air to stretch it out to its full size and proper thinness.

And what of the tossing in the air? "People do it just for fun," Berisha said.

Rush Greenough of Beacon is a regular customer who rates the restaurant highly. "If it goes to 10, I'll give it 10," he said. "I'm 84 years old; I've been eating pizza a long time."

Craig Wolf can be reached at cwolf@poughkeepsiejournal.com

Profile

Ken Berisha

Job: Proprietor, Brother's Trattoria, a pizzeria and restaurant in Beacon, and Il Continori in Wappingers Falls.

Training: Six-month course at restaurant-based school in Italy; on-the-job training.

Background: Comes from Kosovo. Lived mostly in Italy until coming to the U.S. in 1985 and Beacon in 1988.